Have you seen Manchester?" wrote Benjamin Disraeli in 1844. "Manchester is as great a human exploit as Athens." And the writer Anthony Burgess, admittedly biased having been born in the city's Harpurhey district, recalled in his autobiography Little Wilson and Big God how, for a Mancunian, a visit to London before the second world war "was an exercise in condescension. London was a day behind Manchester in the arts, in commercial cunning, in economic philosophy".

It may have suffered in the 1970s, like all British post-industrial cities, but by the late 80s and 90s Manchester had rediscovered its zeal. Its buoyant music scene and the domination of Manchester United put it back on the global map and enthused the population with an excess of civic pride. The city began to think big again, staying true to the forward thinking and liberal traditions that made JB Priestley comment: "What Manchester thinks today, the rest of England thinks tomorrow."

That is not an opinion shared by Manchester City malcontents Carlos Tevez and Mario Balotelli, or the Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson, who have been scathing of the city and its conjoined brother Salford.

Clarkson's comments were more damning than those of City's mercenaries, albeit with the dull predictability of an old reactionary. He used his Sunday Times column to give his blinkered opinion on the BBC's plans to move some departments to Salford, "a small suburb with a Starbucks and a canal with ducks in it".

"A lot of the arguments against the BBC's move have centred on the expense, but I believe there's a more important problem… In short, Salford is 'up north'," he wrote, then trolled out a trail of hackneyed cliches about the north-south divide. This from a man who was born in Doncaster, but now revels in being the backseat driver of the Chipping Norton set.

Tevez, having alienated the red half of Manchester when he turned blue, dismayed the rest when he told Susana Giménez, Argentina's equivalent of Oprah Winfrey: "There's nothing to do in Manchester. There's two restaurants and everything's small. It rains all the time, you can't go anywhere... I will not return to Manchester, not for vacation, not anything."

He was swiftly followed by his fellow malcontent, Balotelli, who told Italian TV: "I am not happy in Manchester. I do not like the city. With my team-mates and my manager, everything is fine, but the city is not to my tastes."

Clarkson was rightly put down by Salford council leader John Merry, who said: "These comments make Clarkson look like a slightly more sophisticated version of Alf Garnett."

And the mellifluous broadcaster Stuart Hall, a gleeful curator of northern culture, responded in print, far more poetically. "Does he imagine that at the advance of effete southerners, we retreat to our outside lavatories with ripped-up copies of the News of the Screws. That in our back-to-back terraces we ply Uncle Fred with chitterlings, chunks, bangers and chips, sit in a commode, chamber pot handy, an ashtray of dog ends, a basketful of tinnies…'

Quite rightly, the footballers were also shown the red card. In Manchester's Northern Quarter, a player who made a longer lasting impression on Manchester and the Premier League than Tevez or Balotelli could ever hope to, answered back on behalf of adopted Mancunians. Eric Cantona is a god here and was back in his new guise as director of football for New York Cosmos. When he was still at United, Cantona eulogised: "I feel close to the rebelliousness and vigour of the youth here. Perhaps time will separate us, but nobody can deny that here, behind the windows of Manchester, there is an insane love of football, of celebration and of music." Asked about Tevez and Balotelli's comments, he chided the City players. "I had a great time in Manchester," he said. "I cannot understand anyone not liking it, though I suppose it depends on where they come from and why they are here. As a professional footballer the greatest time you have is on the pitch, but I loved the city as well, the club and the people."

Cantona is far from a lone voice. The city's two most famous footballing sons, George Best and David Beckham, were both adopted Mancunians who embraced the city with gusto. Both realised Manchester is a city that gives back double what you put in. After an initial bout of homesickness, Best fell in love with Manchester and fell in and out of places like the Brown Bull and Phylis's, the late-night drinking den run by the mother of Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy, before he opened two nightclubs and a couple of boutiques of his own. I met Beckham one night just after he broke into United's first team and was surprised at his knowledge and genuine affection for the city.

The truth is that all the disparaging comments are like water off a Mancunian duck's back. The city has never sought the approval of Londoners (and certainly not boors from Doncaster). Ever since Manchester led the world into the industrial age it's had a far more international outlook. Birmingham may think of itself as the country's second city, but Manchester likes to think a little bigger than that. This is a city with a glorious past that's always looking to the future.

There is not enough room in today's Observer to list the myriad achievements and attractions of Salford and Manchester. This is the home of the industrial revolution and the city that split the atom, the birthplace of the computer and the Guardian, the suffragette movement, the free trade movement, the co-operative movement, the anti-corn law league, vegetarianism, the nation's first free library, the world's first intercity railway and the engine room of rock'n'roll that has produced the country's best bands of the past 30 years, from Joy Division to Take That. This is not only where Morrissey met Marr, Jack met Vera and Bobby met George and Denis. It's where Engels met Marx and Rolls met Royce. I could go on… and on.

The rebirth was accelerated apace by the Manchester bomb in 1996, which forced regeneration of the commercial and retail core of the city. Harvey Nichols and Selfridges now stand on that bombsite. There are four Selfridges in the country. Two in Manchester. Birmingham and London make do with one each.

Salford Quay, home of the BBC's new northern HQ at MediaCity, has also been transformed. The world's first industrial estate and its docks is now a northern Canary Wharf, with a cultural life its southern counterpart lacks thanks to the Lowry and Imperial War Museum North. MediaCity is based on a five-acre piazza twice the size of Trafalgar Square.

The regeneration has not been seamless, but Manchester and Salford is a tale of two cities reborn. Like the rest of the country, the area is suffering the effects of the current climate, with rising unemployment and falling house prices. But with a social calendar full of prestigious cultural and sporting events, it remains a tourist hot spot. The New York Times recently included Manchester in its top 50 places to visit in the world, and in June the city had its highest hotel capacity since records began.

I've read articles about why the BBC shouldn't move to Salford, none of them convincing, most written by those loth to leave the south. Many colleagues in London would relish a move north, and subsequent better quality of life, and many colleagues in Manchester would be forever grateful if the BBC move meant they weren't forced to make the journey south.

Talented people gravitate towards where the work is, be it Shepherd's Bush or Salford. "Who cares whether the Blue Peter garden is in London or not?" asked Clarkson. Who cares if it is in Salford or not? Does anyone apart from contributors and contestants even register that Newsnight Review and The Weakest Link are made in Glasgow? How can the home of the world's longest-running and best loved soap opera not be a fitting place from which to produce television? "Manchester," wrote Orwell, "is the belly and guts of the nation." "If the BBC said I had to move back up north," wrote Jeremy Clarkson, "I'd resign in a heartbeat." Wishful thinking.

Luke Bainbridge is a writer and a former editor of Manchester's City Life